New Brighton to Monterey – 43 miles

I welcome the return of cloudy skies. Sunday morning traffic through Aptos is light and hills are few as The Road takes me on its 40-mile crescent around Monterey Bay.

Today’s leg is brought to me by agriculture, notably by hundreds of acres of strawberry fields forever, starting from Manresa Uplands State Beach to well past the Pajaro River.

Artichokes abound as well, nearing the point of harvest.

The bike route makes a detour to keep me away from Watsonville and Castroville, sending me instead along eerily quiet roads, their asphalt beaten by generations of tractors and agricultural machinery.

The detour is meant to shave off a couple of miles, but the end of the day’s ride begins to feel farther and farther away, and even the change from Santa Cruz into Monterey County doesn’t make me feel any closer. I rejoin thunderous, two-lane traffic on Highway 1 through Moss Landing to reach Del Monte Boulevard and the Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail.

The trail is a triumph of rails-to-trails planning, stretching 18 miles from Castroville in the north to Pacific Grove in the south, over the Southern Pacific railroad tracks that used to serve Cannery Row. Today it is a priceless urban asset, accommodating joggers, cyclists, pedestrians and young families.

Well thought-out though the trail may be, I manage a wrong turn on it and spend more time studying the map than pedaling. Worse yet, an afternoon tailwind has turned into a strong crosswind, less vexing than a headwind but equally unwelcome when you’ve lost your way and are already doubting The Road’s benign indifference. The mile markers for Monterey don’t help; they never appear often enough and when they do, they don’t count down fast enough. It’s Nature’s way of reminding me how far 43 miles really is.

Eventually, signs for Monterey’s tourist attractions appear, and my mood improves. So much so, that I pause for a selfie at a tiny pop-up protest on the outskirts of town.

I’ve planned a two-night stay in a Monterey hotel on the inland side of the peninsula. My nephew treats me to dinner at a Mexican restaurant and schools me on the personal trainer’s approach to balanced nutrition for physically hellacious endeavors like the one on which I’ve embarked.

“Fats and proteins, Uncle John. Your body makes energy from those. That’s what you’re gonna need to get through this.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“May I have your beans, then?”

“Sorry. I need them. I’ll order another side for you, though.”

Later, in my hotel room on Munras Avenue, I look forward to catching up on sleep and functioning more or less normally for a day and a half. I also intend to give my legs a break the next day.

Nevertheless, I intend to take the excursion that every visit to the Monterey Peninsula should include—especially when cyclists get to take it at no cost.

Monterey to Monterey – 29 miles

It turns out that 17-Mile Drive is about 24 miles long, if you keep getting lost the way I do.

Rising at six, I resolve to ride 17-Mile Drive around Pebble Beach.

“We thought we were getting the day off,” my legs complain.

“You are.”

“Not if we’re pedaling seventeen miles. Probably more.”

“I’m leaving the heavy luggage in the hotel room. It’ll be just me and the bike.”

photo credit: KSBW 8

They aren’t fooled in the least.

Anyway, by eight o’clock I have a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon and hot chocolate in me. By eight-thirty I have made my first wrong turn of the day, missing the approach on Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove. A resident out for her morning walk graciously gives me directions and I correct my course, passing several yard signs warning about the presence of local deer during fawning season.

Even following the resident’s directions I manage to get lost again, then finally reach the main attraction of the drive—the Pacific Coast—at The Restless Sea point of interest.

The drive deserves all of its fame. It’s a series of sharply manicured golf links, craggy rocks adorned with the guano of ages, long stretches of roadside ice plant, the stately mansions of celebrated exploiters and ordinary zillionaires who just got lucky, numerous pull-outs for parking to enjoy the coastline and a winding path with plenty of pedestrians even on a cloudy Monday morning.

At the south side of the peninsula, the drive goes inland and travel alternates between short climbs and dips. Baronial estates crowd the shore side, obstructing the view of Pebble Beach and Carmel Bay. Signs of construction—new homes, remodels, add-ons—abound. Along the route is the main entrance to The Lodge at Pebble Beach, the renowned golf course, the resort and the shops. Naturally, I fit in perfectly.

Then comes the unexpected, grueling climb to the Pebble Beach Highway 1 Gate and the end of 17-Mile Drive. I’m pleased that the bike is only lightly laden but worried about how many similar hills I’ll face over the next few days with the bike fully laden. Fretting and sweating over that, I miss yet more turns and log several unnecessary miles attempting to return to my hotel.

Monterey is also my opportunity to do something about dirty clothes, and with 17-Mile Drive behind me, I turn my attention to laundry for an hour. Other business includes grabbing a nap, sourcing the next day’s meals and dealing with the unexpected loss of a credit card somewhere along the route. “I picked a bad day to get lost in Pacific Grove,” I mutter, watching my day of rest tick away.

At dinner in a fast-casual Italian place downtown, I sit near a table of energetic but well-behaved teenagers tended by their responsible adult. They depart after eating, leaving one of their number to wait for a to-go order. Seeing me scribble away in a diary, he starts a conversation with me about keeping journals. He and his mates are on the golf team of a San Francisco high school and their coach is showing them Monterey’s courses for a couple of days. The lad, Jade, asks what I’m writing about.

“Mostly notes about the bike trip I’m on,” I reply. I tell him briefly about the route and the miles.

“What’s the best thing about journaling?” he asks.

“Nothing now, really. It’s just a stream of notes and things I want to remember.”

“Huh. Will you write about this conversation?”

“Maybe. If you say something I want to remember.”

Jade thinks a moment. “Why are you doing the ride?”

I laugh out loud. “Now that I will write about.” I laugh again.

“Why is that funny?”

“Because I don’t have an answer to that question. On one level, I’m doing it as a fundraiser. On a deeper level, I’m doing it just to do it. Because it’s harder for me not to do it.”

I can see that I sound like somebody’s ridiculous Uncle Wally, so I back off and ask Jade about sports in high school and college. He believes he’ll land a golf scholarship to a four-year school in the coming year. At length, the restaurant staff hands him his to-go boxes, so he and I shake hands and wish each other good luck.

I watch him walk across the room and out the door. He conveys the cool discipline, strong ambition and great expectations that we prize in young people. We too had those characteristics when we were that age, but we didn’t think them extraordinary. They were just part of who we were.

Monterey to Big Sur – 31 miles

“Very well,” says The Road. “Up to this point we’ve just been playing parlor games. Now we shall see what we shall see.”

Fair enough. I know from occasional glances at the elevation profiles in my cycling map that a number of sharp, steep climbs await me and my thighs in the coming days. Preferring real-time exhaustion to forward-looking dread, I have avoided studying those profiles too closely.

And in fact, it turns out that the first punishing hill starts just outside my hotel and rises 500 feet in less than a mile, up Munras, Soledad and Viejo Roads to a dizzying traffic circle that leads to Highway 1 southbound. Panting madly along Viejo, I encounter a road crew setting up for the day. The flagman sees me crawling along at 3 miles a damn’ hour and, in a moment of start-the-shift-with-a-smile good humor, raises his SLOW sign and gestures at it in mock warning. He and his colleagues chatter briefly in Spanish then laugh, which makes me laugh. Eventually, I reach the crest.

Carmel-by-the-Sea has the reputation for being beautiful, but I’m too busy careening down the other side of the hill at 30 miles a damn’ hour in the morning commute to notice. Past the Carmel River and into Carmel Highlands, fewer cars are on the highway.

Mostly, vehicles respect me on this stretch, even more than I would were I the one behind the wheel. In some kind of tacit deference to cyclists, the drivers give me noticeably wide berth, crossing the median stripe with their left-side tires—I can plainly hear the center rumble strip at work—and often crossing entirely into the oncoming lane. I appreciate that, for there is no bike lane and rarely more than a foot of shoulder for me to occupy.

The skies are cloudy but still dry, and the air is cool. No wind. Fog shrouds the hills behind Garrapata State Park, where I stop for a mid-morning bite and, like Huck Finn gratefully returning to the Mississippi, celebrate my return from urban Monterey to the genuine Cabrillo Highway ride.

While sitting by the road, I hear a couple speaking French as they hike back up the path from the beach to their car. We exchange nods when they pass me.

“Did you enjoy the view?” I ask, resisting the temptation to chat with them in their language.

“Yes,” replies the woman, “it’s quite a show, isn’t it?”

I’ve found that the beauty of places like Utah and the California coast resonates differently with French-speaking people than with, say, German or Spanish speakers. Or maybe French speakers have a way of expressing awe that is just closer to the surface. The couple return to their car and drive on.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of traveling by bike—or by any conveyance with wheels, for that matter—in this part of the world. Following disastrous rains several years ago, parts of Highway 1 between Carmel and San Simeon have been closed due to landslides, and the stretch has been open to through traffic for only the past few months. The killer hills, the microscopic shoulder and the years-long closure are all facets of a single reality: Highway 1 is a road where Nature does not want one, especially not on this leg. Like any forbidden fruit, it’s all the more appealing, and riding here feels all the more rewarding.

Later in the morning I reach Bixby Bridge, where northbound and southbound tourists converge for photo opps. I’m a tourist, so why should I be any different from them?

South of the Little Sur River, Point Sur juts into the ocean. The volcanic rock now anchors a California state park that features a 130-year-old lighthouse.

Apart from the toxic shock of the morning’s initial climb, it’s not a tough day on the bike. I coast on the downhills, take breaks for food, water and selfies, stop for road work, watch the river flow alongside the highway and finally hem and haw for twenty minutes over the kind of sandwich to buy at the General Store in the town of Big Sur.

At Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, the unoccupied hike-and-bike is ensconced in a grove of towering redwoods.

The sun peeks only intermittently through the coastal fog, but even if there were more sunlight, little of it would make it to ground through the thick boughs, foliage and tree trunks. I sit at a picnic table, dawdling the afternoon away, when another cyclist walks his bike onto the site.

“Can you find a spot?” I call jokingly.

“Hope so,” he replies. “Not really mobbed, is it?”

Once he has settled in, we have a meal together. Gil starts a new job as a sales engineer for a technology company next week and is savoring the break with a four-day cycling loop starting and ending in Monterey. Like me, he has weathered the bruising climb earlier in the day; unlike me, he has the advantages of youth, low gears, strong legs and mountain-biking experience to fend off exhaustion.

“How far south are you going?” I ask.

“Tomorrow I’ll go to Limekiln,” he says.

“Me too.”

“Yeah. That’s mostly downhill. Then the next day I’ll cut inland, up over the hills—about four or five thousand feet high—then back north through King City, Greenfield and Carmel Valley Road. Eventually, to Monterey.”

I blanch. There’s no disgrace in a ride like mine, but other people’s extremes certainly put it in perspective.

“Have you ridden Highway 1 much?” he asks.

I tell him about my crash-and-burn a couple of years ago coming out of Muir Beach.

“Oh, you mean on Shoreline Highway? I used to ride that on weekends when I lived in The City, but always downhill. I wouldn’t climb that on a bet. It’s a beast. I can see why you bonked. I’ve bonked like that plenty of times, mostly on mountain trails.”

I feel the color come back into my cheeks, and a frisson of confraternity with dedicated cyclists like Gil. I guess bonk happens to us all.

Big Sur to Limekiln (Lucia) – 26 miles

Undaunted by its failure to stub my spirit out like a cigarette butt the day before, The Road throws another soul-searing hill at me as soon as I clear the campground driveway. It’s a 750-foot climb over a scant mile or so, to one of the highest points on Cabrillo Highway. The sky is clear and the sun is bright but the air is still cold, and I keep my windbreaker on. I pedal, stop, rest, drink water, rethink my life, then repeat. It’s a drag restarting each time, with lactic acid and fatigue throbbing in my thighs and knees, but I do it as many times as it takes to reach each crest of the road.

Naturally, white-knuckle downhills follow and I hog the full lane, checking my mirror continually for vehicles approaching from behind.

I can’t remember two dozen tougher yet more beautiful miles of road. It’s gratifying now and then to look as far as I can to the north:

and think, “That’s about where I was this morning,” then to look as far as I can to the south:

and think, “That’s about where I’ll be at the end of the day.”

And, as usual, there is as much to behold on the inland side of the highway as on the shore side, including at Regent’s Slide, where construction crews have struggled the past few years to convince Nature to accept a road. Following torrential rains a few years ago, the slide looked like this:

photo credit: Caltrans (2024)

This and other slides forced the closure of Cabrillo Highway to through traffic, bringing normal life to a standstill in this part of the state. Now Regent’s Slide looks like this:

Speaking of getting Nature to accept things (or stop trying to destroy them), the Rain Rocks Rock Shed covering Highway 1 next to the Pitkins Curve Bridge north of Lucia is an eye-opener.

Although it was finished in 2014, it has the look of a venerable structure from the last century. It’s designed to keep the road clear of debris dropped by landslides and rockfalls on this stretch of highway.

After the last time I rode a big chunk of the Pacific Coast Highway, a discerning friend innocently asked, “What do you think about, riding for hours on end day after day?” I didn’t have an answer, but it’s a fair question.

Mostly, it’s sentences and paragraphs about the trip, some of which have made it into this travelogue.

Next, there’s the road surface, which, if it isn’t smooth, harshes my cool in ways that I can’t help commenting on out loud.

Then there’s my body. Do I need water yet? When should I eat so I don’t run out of calories in the middle of the next hill? Shall I stand-pedal and let some blood into my legs? Am I warm? Am I cold? Are we there yet?

I think about how to help end gun violence and why the hell it even has to be a problem in the first place. On this trip, I think especially about the billboard our organization is running, and the process we’re undergoing to rebrand ourselves.

There’s the happy mental cavitation that goes on when I stop to stare for a while at the coast or watch birds sailing on thermals hundreds of feet below the road. It’s a bit like thinking, but without the chatter.

Shifting gears, always I’m shifting gears, spending a lot of time in either first gear or twenty-seventh gear. That’s more about muscle memory than about thinking, except when the gears hesitate to do my bidding; in that case I pepper my speech with the kinds of words that have made New Jersey great.

Then there are things I don’t think about and don’t miss thinking about, like billable work, the current administration, the Padres, and what a con artificial intelligence is.

I wish I could say that I’m devoting mental cycles to channeling the likes of Steinbeck, Kerouac, Kesey, Henry Miller, Alan Watts and other luminaries who have graced this part of the world. But if they have whispered their insights to me on this trip, I’ve been too busy shifting gears and pedaling to notice.

By mid-afternoon I’ve arrived at Limekiln State Park, a campground wedged into a space where, frankly, Nature does not want one. The hike-and-bike fits no more than three or four tents.

The campground occupies the gorge of Limekiln Creek on the inland side and offers easy access to an expansive beach. It’s a far cry from glamping, yet all the more appealing for it. I pitch my tent, enjoy the creek for a while, then walk down to the beach.

On my last long ride, the byword was “If I can do this, I can do anything.” I said that whenever my legs or seat or back complained, almost like a mantra. This time, the byword has evolved to “I don’t have to do this fast. I just have to do it.”

Now and then, I get into moods that make me push back even on the “just have to do it” part. But not when I’m looking at the beach at Limekiln.

Limekiln to San Simeon – 43 miles

I sleep about five hours, lie awake for 90 minutes, then fall back asleep for a couple more hours. Thinking back to the elevation profiles I glanced at on my cycling map, I’m pretty certain there are some merciless climbs waiting for me on today’s ride.

“Maybe not,” the optimist in me counters. “Maybe the toughest hills are behind me and today will be a gravy lick.”

But the ride starts ominously. The road out of the campground back up to Highway 1 is like a ladder, and I need to push the bike along, one of the few times on this entire trip that I have to resort to that.

Again the sky is clear and the air is cool. Wisps of fog drift over the coast as the morning sun warms the canyons.

After a half-hour, I come upon a queue of cars stopped at a one-way controlled traffic break. Knowing that the flagman will treat a slow bicycle differently than fast vehicles, I pedal up to the front of the queue and greet him with a wave.

“How’s it going?” he asks. “Where you headed?”

Although the ride has winded me, it has not yet exasperated me, so I’m amenable to chatting. “Today, San Simeon,” I say.

“Oh, yeah. That’s mostly downhill.” I doubt it, but I nod anyway. He smiles. “Hey, you want a water? I got some.” He points at an ice chest by the side of the road.

“No, but thanks for offering.” I point at the logo on his orange vest. “I’ve never heard of Avila Company. You guys do a lot of work on this road?”

“Yeah, we’re pretty big. I’m based in Paso.”

“Robles? That’s a long way from here. You drive out every day?”

“Only when it’s a close job, like this one. Hey, you don’t have all the cool gear that most cyclists have.”

It was only a matter of time until somebody had the candor to mention it. “Well, they know a lot that I don’t. I’m still new at this.”

His walkie-talkie crackles as his colleague at the south end of the break updates him on the northbound queue of cars. “Okay,” he replies into the microphone. “Listen, I got a cyclist up here. I’ll send all the cars first, so wait for him, right?”

“Copy that.”

The northbound cars stream through and the flagman flips his sign from STOP to SLOW. After the last car, I start pedaling. It is gratifying that the universe is taking such good care of me on a narrow, two-lane road several hundred feet above the rocks and surf, so I fist-bump the flagman as I pass. Within seconds I am whistling downhill, eyes riveted to the pavement in front of me and hands riveted to the brake levers.

There is little commerce on this stretch of Highway 1—the last shop I passed was two days ago—so the tiny store, hotel and restaurant at Gorda stand out. I stop for groceries. Multiple signs announce, “No public restrooms. Access with minimum $2 purchase.” I don’t need to use the restroom, but it’s obvious what most passing travelers value Gorda for. On the deck outside the store stands a coin-operated pay phone that charges $2 for three minutes, a lifeline for telephonically desperate motorists in a region where cellular service can be spotty.

Inside the store I pick out a muffin and three bananas.

“Ten-fifty,” says the proprietress, a wisp of a woman who has surely seen travelers of all stripes come through. I hand over the money without flinching, aware of shopkeepers’ economics in this part of the world but nevertheless relieved that I don’t have to buy gasoline here.

“How’s your season going?” I ask. “Better now that the highway is open?”

“Yes, better.”

“That must have been a rough spot for you. How long was it closed?”

“About three and a half years. Yes, it was a tough time indeed—” her voice catches briefly “—for all of us here.”

Outside, I spot a stone bench and have a mid-morning meal of muffin and banana, psyching myself up for the hills that I’m vaguely aware are out there waiting for me. I resume the ride.

At plenty of points along this stretch, The Road toys with people on bicycles.

“Lovely shoreline, isn’t it?” The Road says flirtatiously.

“It is,” I agree. “But you’ve got some hills in store for me, haven’t you?”

“Maybe. See that one off to the left, curving out of sight?”

“Yes.”

“Think you can handle it?”

“No problem.”

“Good. Remember that about an hour from now.”

Sure enough, just south of Gorda and inland are the M-hills. Slowing to 3 or 4 miles per hour, I climb about 700 feet in a mile, dip 500 feet downward in a nerve-racking plunge, then have to claw that 500 feet back again in another mile. With the day warming up, the climbs wear me out. Finally, raw gravity sends me plummeting back to sea level near Ragged Point. In total, it’s four or five of the kind of miles that only crazy people on bikes would travel.

The return to sea level also heralds a county change, from Monterey to San Luis Obispo (SLO), as the squiggly road straightens and flattens out. The hardest pedaling is behind me and the mountains and thick forests give way to vast, grassy hills that roll on for miles, tan and waterless under cloudless skies. Cattle dot the landscape in small herds of a dozen or two head. The shoulder magically broadens from negligible and forbidding to eight feet wide and welcoming. Best of all, a strong tailwind propels me southward comfortably, past Point Sierra Nevada and the Piedras Blancas Northern Elephant Seal Rookery, a series of long beaches populated at the water’s edge by basking elephant seals.

The state makes it easy to observe the seals, which naturally array themselves perpendicular to the shoreline. A large parking lot, graphic explainers and wooden benches encourage passersby to stop and see what the wildlife is up to.

“Nice,” say my thighs. “Now, can we get back on the road and take advantage of that booming tailwind? We can use the break.”

“Very well,” I reply, remounting the bike and pulling back onto the road. But a few minutes later, another irresistible photo opp presents itself: barely visible in a dense, green patch on the crest of a hill is Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, or Hearst Castle.

I pass familiar landmarks across the highway from Hearst Castle Road, including the pier, the thickly forested Donnay Point and the beach parking lot where I was cited for doing a doughnut in my sports car, back when I knew what to do with a compliant accelerator pedal. But the seat of my pants won’t allow me to stop for nostalgia now, eager as it is to get off the bike and celebrate the end of the hard work. I roll into Hearst San Simeon State Park, where a volunteer in the kiosk greets me enthusiastically. I head for the unoccupied hike-and-bike, pitch my tent, take a needed shower and then rest.

After an REI cook-it-in-a-pouch pasta dinner, it’s time to revel in having put behind me the part of the bike tour I most dreaded: the stretch from Monterey to San Simeon. I’ve made it through that stretch in one piece, my limbs all operate as before, the bike still functions reasonably well and I’ve seen things I’d never have seen from an automobile.

Remember the one about the guy who keeps hitting himself in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when he stops? A long ride is in that same category. However, the only thing more difficult would be to stay home and not go at all.

And as I drift off to sleep, I’m already forgetting how difficult it has been.